From this point on, much that I write is based on personal experience.
The situation changed drastically overnight between March 18 and 19, 1944. We went to bed not suspecting that we would rise to a world totally transformed.
It was about six in the morning when I looked out the window. I was frozen at the sight before my eyes. The gigantic square to which our windows opened was filled with soldiers sitting on troop carriers. I did not recognize immediately what kind of troops these were but it soon became apparent they were Germans, taking possession of the city and, as it turned out, the country.
I would come to look back with astonishment at my family’s reaction to the presence of the Wehrmacht. There was no panic whatsoever. It was as if my parents had prepared themselves for that fateful moment.
Mother made breakfast and began sewing money and biscuits into the lining of the clothing we were to wear. Father busied himself with false documents and made sure the big gate, the sole entrance into our home, was securely locked.
I prayed, got ready for school like any other day, and made my way, amid the lines of vehicles and soldiers in the square, to the tram that took me to school.
* * * * *
In April came the decree for all Jews to wear a yellow star. A new string of orders also appeared: Jews were forbidden to travel on public conveyances, visit a theatre, movie-house or coffeehouse, and wear any kind of military apparel.
I, a not-yet-fifteen-year-old hounded Jew, paraded down the street as if I were on top of the world, proud like a peacock of my yellow star, my Jewish identity.
During the last days of school I stole a set of personal identity documents from a Christian student who resembled me. On the way home some Jewish students criticized me. Given the circumstances, their reaction was remarkable. “This is an outright act of theft!” declared one of the boys. In vain did I try to explain the need for documents that could save lives.
Evidently, as was true of most Hungarian Jews, they still did not feel the noose around their neck. But not even a week later the order came moving fourteen thousand Jews of our city into the brick factory – the way-station to permanent residence, or if one wishes to be blunt about it, the Final Solution of the Jewish Question in Hungary.
On the morning of the move my brother Miki and I readied ourselves to cross the police cordon drawn around our block to get to our hiding place. Before leaving our home we visited our grandparents’ apartment. We lived under one roof, but their apartment was separate.
Miki and I were at a loss. We wanted to bid them goodbye. But what do you say in such a situation? I could not visualize my grandparents being taken, in an hour or two, out of their home forever. I could not absorb the notion that this was the last time I would see them. The idea seemed preposterous, despite the many stories we had heard from Polish refugees who passed through our home.
I knew everyone was getting ready for a difficult journey, but I still thought that at the end of the journey we would arrive at an ordinary destination and walk or be taken to a place where we could settle down.
Apparently some part of my mind knew and accepted the stark and bitter reality –witness my having stolen a set of Aryan papers and my readiness to move to a hiding place. Yet on some other level I chased reality away and did not seem ready to cope with it.
